Imagine a newsletter that sifts through the endless volumes of HR articles on the internet, selects the ones that will help you most, and delivers that content to your inbox in an easy to read format. Now imagine that same newsletter is at no cost to you, or your organization - HRWatch for Human Resource Pros

Insider secrets on hiring from the world's top employer. If you asked managers at large companies "What is the single most important thing you do at work?" most would reflexively answer "Go to meetings." Now imagine asking the same question of the top sports coaches or general managers. They go to meetings all day too, yet they would probably say that the most important thing they do is draft, recruit, or trade for the best players they can. Smart coaches know...

As companies face challenges related to competition for the best talent, recruitment strategies used by many pharma companies can have broader applications outside the industry, as well. Employers in the pharma and biotechnology sectors, especially smaller companies working to advance their first product to the market, can face many special challenges in efforts to attract and retain top talent. These include factors associated with the inherent risks in drug development, the demand for candidates with highly specialized experience in science and research, increasing competition with other companies for top hires, and the need to create a culture that promotes employee engagement and interaction and to maintain that culture effectively during periods of rapid growth or transition. By recognizing and understanding these challenges...

HR departments today have an uphill battle just getting replacements for team members who leave, yet a new study finds that, despite anticipated growth, companies are expecting to reduce their HR staff. During the worst of this most-recent recession, talent-acquisition teams -- along with countless other departments -- were understandably downsized. However, now unemployment is down to a remarkable 6.1 percent and the employed workforce is growing. So why are talent-acquisition teams still stretched so thin? HR departments today have an uphill battle just getting replacements for team members who leave, let alone building up their department again. In fact, a Hackett Group study found that despite anticipated growth, companies are expecting to reduce HR staff by 2.7 percent. Some companies...

Last year, this extended column handicapped the odds of the big three -- Oracle, SAP/SuccessFactors and Workday -- to become the top provider of next-generation cloud HCM systems to large organizations. The stakes are enormous, and a lot has changed in one year as they enter the second turn of the track. For the last few years,...

A recent survey conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of insurance provider Unum finds only 33 percent of employees asked to review benefits in 2013 rated the benefits education they received as "excellent" or "very good," a 37-percent drop from the year before and a reversal of the upward trend in ratings since 2009. In addition,...

If you want a wellness program that slashes healthcare costs, it must include meaningful incentives and offer comprehensive services that include chronic disease management. But don't expect any savings for several years. Those are the key results of a five-year observational study conducted by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Health Plan. The study was conducted between 2007 and 2011, says Michael Parkinson, M.D., senior medical director at UPMC Health Plan, an integrated healthcare-delivery system headquartered in Pittsburgh. What made it so unique was...

Finally, it happened. The United State experienced its first case of Ebola. A Liberian national living in Dallas was diagnosed with the virus after returning from a trip to his homeland. U.S. health officials are reacting accordingly. (Meanwhile, a nurse in Spain was just diagnosed as Europe's first confirmed case.) While the nation's Ebola threat remains relatively minor right now, that's hardly the case, of course, in the West African countries of Liberia, Nigeria, Guinea and Sierra Leone. With the media reports as a backdrop,...

Hiring the right people for the job is easier said than done. Choosing your "9-5 roommates" shouldn't be taken lightly. What makes the perfect candidate? Is it their prompt 2:20 p.m. arrival for their 2:30 p.m. interview, or their cover letter so well written that you couldn't even have caught your own attention that fast?...

It's one thing to jam the copier your second day on the job. But falling asleep at your desk? That's just unforgivable. At work, when every potential mistake could mean an unwanted 9:00 a.m. meeting with human resources, it can be tough to laugh off your slip-ups. Secret-sharing app Whisper tapped into its userbase to share the kind of embarrassing work mistakes that would keep us red in the face for months after the fact...

You might have heard some rumors about millennial workers: They're entitled, lazy and always looking for a pat on the head. Take these assumptions with a grain of salt: Millennials are the future, and it's impossible to paint an entire generation with one single swipe of the paintbrush. As more Boomers retire and millennials flood the workforce, you also can't ignore the secrets to keeping these tech-savvy workers happy. Below, we've outlined a few...

Most employers think they follow laws to a tee. However, many business owners and their employees are unknowingly breaking federal employment laws, which can lead to time-consuming and costly legal lawsuits. Below, we address the most common forms of employee lawsuits and spell out tips to help you maintain a safe working environment and avoid becoming embroiled in the court system...

Recruiting. It is the bane of every startups existence because it takes up so much time, it is so competitive to sign people and it feels like unproductive time because it's not moving the ball forward on product, engineering, sales, marketing, biz dev, fund raising. It consumes time and energy and the payoff doesn't come for a long time. But...

Reinhold Niebuhr wrote a prayer that many of you will recognize. It goes roughly: "Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." What does this have to do with looking for a job?...

A recent HBR article pointed out how CEO's and organizational leaders want to see change in their Human Resources department - change that may result in splitting its duties into administrative (HR-A) and leadership/organizational development (HR-LO). But unless there are changes in thinking further up the leadership ladder, the result will just be more executives with more titles with more letters. CEO's believe,...

I've probably sorted through the materials of thousands of job applicants over the years. Sometimes it's for full-time work; sometimes I'm looking for a contractor. Sometimes the position is challenging and complex; sometimes the tasks are basic. But no matter what the nature of the hiring may be, one thing remains the same: if your cover letter doesn't impress, I won't even look at your resume. Every job posting I've ever written has made it clear that I require a cover letter. I even go so far as to tell them what I'm looking for in that cover letter: an explanation of why their experience and skills makes them a good fit for the opening. There is no opportunity for confusion. And yet,...

You are annoying your boss and colleagues any time you take your phone out during meetings, says new research from USC's Marshall School of Business, and if you work with women and people over forty they're even more perturbed by it than everyone else. The researchers conducted a nationwide survey of 554 full-time working professionals earning above...

We in the Human Resources profession often have a bit of an inferiority complex, and Ram Charan's recent blog in Harvard Business Review "It's Time to Split HR" really struck a nerve. In Charan's article, he states "it's time for the department to go" and proposes to split the HR function into two parts: the "administration" part (ie. compensation and benefits), which would report to the CFO, and the "leadership and organization" part, which would report to the CEO. His argument is that:...

There is a particular, awful feeling you get working in a company that is sinking. You can tell the minute you walk in the door that the energy is off. If you pay attention to the vibe you get on a job interview, you'll know when a company is broken. People don't look you in the eye. No one wants to be there, but you might take the job regardless if you're out of other options. You can tell...

The equivalent of an entire sales force is replaced at many firms every four years, so it's critical that go-to-market initiatives remain tied to strategic goals. Frank Cespedes explains how in his book, Aligning Strategy and Sales. Too often,...

For companies to remain competitive, using data and analytics for key business decisions is essential. But it can be tricky when the decision involves your own employees and you need to collect data from them to be fully informed. How to you obtain the information on use of time, activities, management dynamics and other items in a way that's both unobtrusive and respectful of your workers' personal boundaries?...